Danish professor Bjorn Lomborg argues that climate change is not a top priority for governments and that its importance has been overstated.
Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images

The Abbott government found $4m for the climate contrarian Bjørn Lomborg to establish his “consensus centre” at an Australian university, even as it struggled to impose deep spending cuts on the higher education sector.

A spokesman for the education minister, Christopher Pyne, said the government was contributing $4m over four years to “bring the Copenhagen Consensus Center methodology to Australia” at a new centre in the University of Western Australia’s business school.

The spokesman said the “Australia Consensus Centre” was a proposal put forward by the “university and Dr Lomborg’s organisation”.

Sources have told Guardian Australia the establishment of the centre had come as a surprise even to senior staff in the business school, who were unaware that the centre was being established until shortly before it was announced this month.

The University of Western Australia vice-chancellor, Prof Paul Johnson, confirmed the money had been offered specifically for the centre, telling Guardian Australia it was “an opportunity that arose in discussions with the department and the minister”.

“As we all know it is difficult to get federal dollars to flow across the Nullabor,” he said.

“Bjørn Lomborg was in WA last year and called in at the university. He had separate conversations with the minister … I have been having conversations about this for six or seven months.”

As Lomborg explained in a Freakonomics podcast last year, his consensus centre was defunded by the centre-left Danish government in 2012 and he was searching for a long-term funding solution. In the meantime his centre had moved to the US and was relying on private donations for a budget of about US$1m a year.

“We used to be funded by the Danish government, from 2004 until 2012,” he said. “One of the things that the Danish government did not like was that we said, ‘Yes global warming is real, it is a challenge, but the typical way that we solve it turns out to be a pretty poor investment of resources.’ When there was a change of governments here we went from a centre-right to a centre-left government, they actually cut off our funding.

“We moved to the US where we get funding from private individuals and we’re trying to find a long-term solution for actually getting funding. So we’re a … nonprofit in the US. We used to have a budget of about $2m a year. Right now, we probably have a budget of a little more than $1m a year. And we get it from private donations.”

Pyne’s spokesman said the federal government’s $4m was “around a third of the total cost” of the new Australia Consensus Centre, with the university also contributing and “committed to raising external funds.

Johnson said the university’s contribution would be in kind, but that it was seeking more funding from the state government or the private sector.

The centre would have three or four staff and be operational by June or July. Lomborg had been appointed an adjunct professor, as well as co-chairing the centre’s advisory board, with Johnson.

“I anticipate he will contribute to the intellectual life of the university when he is in Western Australia,” Johnson said.

Lomborg uses cost-benefit analysis to advise governments what spending produces the best social value for money spent, concluding that climate change is not a top-priority problem. It says the seriousness of the issue has been overstated, that subsidies for renewable energy make no economic sense, that we should stop spending as much foreign aid on climate projects and that poor countries need continued access to cheap fossil fuels.

He was also appointed to advise the Abbott government on foreign aid as one of 14 people on an international reference group for the new “Innovation Xchange” which aims to find ideas and encourage more private sector involvement in delivering aid.

Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, questioned what kind of message the appointment sent to Pacific countries who are deeply concerned about the impact of climate change.

In the Freakonomics podcast Lomborg described his policy on taking private donations.

“There’s no strings attached,” he said. “We’re very clear on saying we take no money from fossil fuels, and we do not let anyone direct what we’re going to do. So we have only taken money from private individuals and foundations that have accepted that.

“With that said, almost all of them have wanted to remain anonymous. There are a few like the Kaufman Foundation, for instance, who have accepted to say that they’ve given money to us. We’ve also got money from New Ventures Foundation, from the Randolph Foundation and from Rush Foundation.”

The Rush Foundation looks for new policy on HIV Aids and the New Ventures Fund is financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates has backed Lomborg’s views that wealthy countries should not try to stop poor countries using fossil fuels to alleviate poverty.

UWA said the Australia Consensus Centre would have “three main projects” – advising on the “smartest” post-2015 UN international development goals, advising on what policies would best “keep Australia prosperous in a generation’s time” and “setting global priorities for development aid and helping Dfat and development agencies produce the most good for every development dollar spent”.

“It was a standard funding agreement with a series of deliverables,” Johnson said.

He said the centre would hold a major conference in 2016 or 17 on Indo-Pacific development goals. It would also do cost benefit analyses of investment in agriculture, which could inform the debate about the development of northern Australia.

Last year Lomborg spoke at an event on “energy poverty” in the leadup to the G20 in Brisbane, sponsored by Peabody Coal.

Tony Abbott quoted Lomborg in his 2009 book, Battlelines, writing: “It doesn’t make sense, though, to impose certain and substantial costs on the economy now in order to avoid unknown and perhaps even benign changes in the future. As Bjørn Lomborg has said: ‘Natural science has undeniably shown us that global warming is manmade and real. But just as undeniable is the economic science which makes it clear that a narrow focus on reducing carbon emissions could leave future generations with major costs, without major cuts to temperatures.’”

And in a speech to the Grattan Institute in 2013, the then Coalition environment spokesman, Greg Hunt, used Copenhagen Consensus Center findings to support his policy to abolish the carbon tax.

Labor’s environment spokesman, Mark Butler, said Abbott was “using scarce public funds to help legitimise his climate scepticism”.

“Tony Abbott has deputised one of the world’s most well-known renewable energy sceptics to continue his climate change denial and attacks on renewable energy,” Butler said on Friday.

The Institute of Public Affairs responded to Lomborg’s new Australian operation by saying, “Bjørn, it’s great to have you!”

Lomborg will be the co-chair of the Australia Consensus Centre Advisory Board with Prof Johnson, the university’s vice-chancellor.